


Keep Your Enemies Closer

by fractured_mirror



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Both in the traditional Jonah sense and in the Elias being a well-deserved bastard TO Jonah sense, Character trapped in their own body, Depersonalization, Elias Bouchard Being a Bastard, Eye Trauma, Gen, Is it really major character death if it's just Jonah for a bit at the beginning? You decide, Just...CW: OG!Elias POV, No beta we kayak like Tim, Possession, Swearing, Time Travel Fix-It, Web Avatar Original Elias Bouchard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:00:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26491558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractured_mirror/pseuds/fractured_mirror
Summary: Killing Jonah Magnus hadn’t changed anything.Not for the world, at least. It had changed everything for Elias Bouchard.And now he's going to be the one to make a few changes.What if...what if I combined my favorite niche genres of TMA fic into ONE fic, like one OG!Elias time travel fix-it fic, would that be f*cked up or what
Comments: 77
Kudos: 222





	1. Chapter 1

Killing Jonah Magnus hadn’t changed anything.

Well, okay, that wasn’t quite true. It hadn’t changed anything for the world at large. It had changed everything for Elias Bouchard.

Elias had honestly thought he was done for when Jon stormed into the Panopticon and trapped him and Jonah in the—what had he called it?—“Statement of Jonah Magnus, regarding his own mortality and the end of his life at the hands of Martin Blackwood and Basira Hussein.” He had to hand it to them, that was clever. It had been a short statement, given to a, um, _captive_ _audience_ , and Elias had felt so much satisfaction seeing the bastard stuck listening to his precious Archive that, really, he didn’t mind that it was going to end with a knife to his face and a handful of bullets to Magnus’s chest. We’ve all gotta go sometime, right?

But Martin got to the eyes before Basira got to the heart, and when all was said and done Elias found himself on the ground, blinded but breathing, his puppet strings cut just in time to avoid going down with the puppeteer.

…He also thought he was done for a few minutes later, when they noticed he still had a pulse and he couldn’t even begin to remember how the whole “talking” thing was supposed to work. Thankfully Jon, at least, was very much an ask-questions-first-then-shoot-later type of guy. It wasn’t exactly pleasant getting grilled by the Archivist at full power when he could barely speak, but in those circumstances? Elias was glad to have the words ripped out of him.

It took a few tries for Jon to get an answer that convinced the others ( ** _“Who are you?”_** “Agh- ack- E-Eli-Elias…” **“ _Your full legal birth name, please.”_** “El-Elias…J-Jacob…B-Bouchard…” **_“What is your relationship to Jonah Magnus?”_** “He- ow, geez- He w-wore me like a, like a f-fucking suit for twenty years!”) but the group warmed up to him pretty quick after that. It was amazing how fast they stopped wanting to just haul off and punch him every time they heard his voice come out of his face, all things considered.

And just like that, he was free.

Free to wander around the apocalypse, because, again, killing Jonah Magnus hadn’t changed anything. Not in the grand scheme of things, at least.

Not yet.

* * *

“Hey, Jon? Got a minute?”

Elias tentatively stepped onto the top level of the Panopticon.

“Jon?” No answer. He sighed and just walked towards the center until the stick he’d been using as a cane hit something fleshy, then sat down next to it.

Sure enough, Jon was here again, lying on his back staring at the sky and probably everything else too. It was getting pretty easy to find him when he disappeared to “clear his head” or “think for a bit” or whatever excuse he had. Not that Elias could really blame him. Their fourth failed attempt to fix everything had hit them all pretty hard. Even Martin had been really withdrawn and subdued lately.

“Jon.” Elias gently shook his shoulder until he stirred, then gave him a minute to get his bearings and refocus on his regular eyes.

“Elias?” Jon’s clothes rustled as he sat up. “What is it?”

“I think I might have an idea. For what to try next. I’m not sure if it’ll work, but…I think there’s actually a decent chance?”

Jon sighed. “Well, let’s hear it, then.”

“Okay,” Elias started, suddenly aware of just how stupid this was going to sound. “Okay, so all we’ve managed to do so far is wish we could have stopped the whole thing before it started, right? So…” He started tugging nervously at a loose thread sticking out of his sleeve. “…why don’t we just do that?”

“Stop it before it started.” Jon was raising an eyebrow, Elias was sure of it. He could feel that classic this-statement-is-all-bullshit expression with every fiber of his being.

“Well, you know the house on Hill Top Road?” Elias heard Jon suck in air through his teeth and hurried to get the rest in before he started objecting. “It’s like a massive fortress for the Web now. I figure if you can _see_ anything in the world from the Panopticon, you could probably _change_ anything in the world from that house.”

“Even the past? Can the Web _do_ that?”

Elias shrugged. “You tell me, Eye Guy.”

Jon went quiet for a moment while Elias gritted his teeth against the way-too-familiar prickly feeling of _eyes everywhere_. Then he groaned and the staring let up. “All I’m getting is a migraine and way more information than I can process on the nature of causality and the limits of the human perception of spacetime.”

Elias grinned. “A solid maybe, then?”

“Even if it is possible, I don’t see how we’d go about doing it. What, are we just going to barge in and tell the Fates we want to have a go on the loom? I may be kind of in charge here, but I _Know_ I can’t do anything with the past except see it, and I don’t exactly want to trust, say, Annabelle Cane to just do it for us out of the kindness of her heart…Where are we going to find a Web avatar that we know is on board with our plan?”

“Yeah, well, um…” The thread Elias had been fiddling with came off in his hand. “About that…”

“What about it?” Jon’s voice took on a sharp, uneasy edge.

“…You really don’t read our minds, do you? I’m actually touched.”

“I’m…waiting to see where you’re going with this?”

Elias took a deep breath.

“Look, Jon. I spent 22 goddamn years as a passenger in my own freaking body. It-It does things to you, after a while. I couldn’t move, not even my ey- _his_ eyes. I just had to look at whatever he was looking at and wait and see what he would do. Couldn’t sleep except when he did, and then I couldn’t wake up until he did. Couldn’t even cry cause the tear ducts weren’t mine anymore, so my emotions almost felt…fake. I felt fake. Like…Like if you can’t choose what you’re looking at and you can’t move and you can’t talk and no one knows you’re there, does it even _matter_ that you can still think? Are you even a _person_ anymore at that point? God, Jon, no one even _mourned_ me, they just started calling him Elias like he’d been me all along and I’d never been anything at all. Even Jonah mostly forgot about me once he got bored of gloating, he just shoved me to the back of our mind and left me to rot.

“It got to the point where I almost stopped seeing myself as me or a self or anything besides a pile of meat and nerves for him to puppet around. A-A few half-formed thoughts in Jonah Magnus’s subconscious. And, well, I…It sounds weird, but fear was what kept me from fading into nothing. The fear I felt when he moved me around, the feeling that I was gonna gag on every last slimy smug-ass word he forced out of my mouth…” Oh, whoops. Jon made a sort of choking noise at that one. Whatever. Elias had too much momentum going to stop and apologize.

“That was _me_ , Jon. That was mine. That was the only thing I had to remind me that I was still a person, separate from him. The only thing of mine that Jonah didn’t take. So I learned to love that fear, cause what else can you do? And, heh, wouldn’t you know it, when you feed a fear god every minute of every day for two decades, well…” Elias trailed off, tugging nervously at a loose strand of spider silk that was sticking out from one of his fingers.

“Good lord,” Jon whispered.

“Yeah.”

It was a while before Jon spoke again. “Have you- Have you ever tried…influencing anything?”

“A couple times. I was pretty aimless at first, didn’t really know what to do so I just like…hid his keys every morning for a month, made sure his stupid fancy pens were always out of ink, that sort of petty revenge type stuff.” A disbelieving chuckle from Jon. Elias smiled for a second. “I didn’t try doing anything important until after we…after he…after Gertrude, and even then it seemed like I never knew what to do until it was too late. This Web stuff is _hard_ , Jon.”

“I’d imagine it is.”

“But I did manage a few things. Like, you know how you found Prentiss’s worms when you were going after a spider? I-I sent it. I didn’t mean for it to set off a whole _thing_ right then, I swear I was just trying to warn you before it got any worse down there. And I left that tape you found when you went looking for Martin in the Lonely, the one with…with Jonah and Gertrude. Thought you might as well know what you were walking into, plus I…I honestly hoped that if you knew about him you might, I dunno, see that I was still in there or something? Totally understand that you didn’t have the time to look, of course. And, um…I helped you hold him down so Martin and Basira could finish him off. That wasn’t _all_ Eye, I mean…I don’t think it _really_ wanted to lose him.”

“I, um…Wow. Thank- Thank you.” A long pause. “Sorry, I just…it’s a lot to take in, I never realized-“

“Sorry,” Elias cut in. “I meant to tell you before, but well…I know how everyone felt about Jonah, obviously, and I know how you feel about the Web.” There were a few more strands of cobweb on his fingertips now. He absentmindedly rolled them between his fingers, twisting them into one. “I thought we should, like, work through one thing at a time, you know?”

“I- No, it’s fine, it’s not that, I just, you were…” Jon stammered. Elias held up a hand to quiet him.

“Anyway. What I’m saying is, if you’re looking for a Web avatar who we can trust to follow through on this, well. I guarantee you that there is nothing in the world, absolutely nothing, that could get between me and fucking with Jonah Magnus’s master plan. You know you can trust that, right?”

A smile started creeping in around the edges of Jon’s voice. “I think I do know that, yes.”

“I mean, I’ll need some help fleshing out a plan. Okay, a lot of help, actually. And probably some practice with my Web powers? And a good rundown of what happened when, I wasn’t exactly paying attention the whole time and I’m a little fuzzy on the details. And I’m thinking I should give you a statement right before I go, like a proper Archive one, you know? Fire up the old existential terror so I can use it to fuel this whole time-travel shindig. And-”

Jon chuckled. “I’ll go get the others, then.”

* * *

And so, a few days (weeks? Sure, why not) later, Elias strolled into 105 Hill Top Road alone and went straight for what used to be the basement. Followed the twisting strands down into the rift at its heart, a pulsing tear in the fabric of reality that stood out like a scar in his mind. He felt around all the million frayed threads at its edges, searching for one that felt like _before_. When he found it, it felt like home against his fingertips. It felt like power. Like control.

Elias wrapped the silk thread firmly around his hand. He took a deep breath to steady himself, then started walking, reeling the thread towards him as he went, clinging to it like a lifeline as he passed through the hole and into the chaos between everything.

When he opened his eyes, they weren’t his eyes and he wasn’t the one opening them.

 _Okay,_ he thought, trying to channel his rising panic towards feeling out the invisible silk strands all around him. _Here we go again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, an almost unimaginably non-sweary person, blushing as I type the word "ass" uncensored: Elias can have little a swearing. As a treat.
> 
> My second fanfic! Hope you enjoy : )


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elias goes up against Jane Prentiss's worms and Jonah Magnus's indifference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I got on a write instead of sleeping kick and now I have a second chapter! Woo! The rest will not update this quickly.
> 
> Chapter specific content warnings:  
> -Panic attack  
> -Loss of autonomy (like, a LOT of loss of autonomy)  
> -(say it with me) CANON-TYPICAL WORMS!  
> -Canon-typical worm removal  
> -Discussion of, like, hypothetical suicidal ideation? (but no actual suicidal ideation. It'll make sense in a sec)  
> -Eye trauma/body horror (mentioned)  
> -Some quick psychological torture. Just like a light dusting of it.  
> -Graphic depictions of Jonah Magnus verbally being just a big mean meanie. Creepy jerk. Crusty eye gunk man.

Elias really wished he could take a few deep breaths.

_Breathe._

Barring that, he wished he could at least hyperventilate a little, maybe curl up into a ball on the floor for good measure.

_It’s okay, just breathe, it’s okay._

But no, he was still sitting in an office chair, breathing in a horrible, mundane, unhurried sort of way. The breaths felt too shallow and too slow all at once and he wanted to close his eyes and scream but he _couldn’t_ close his eyes or scream and he was _suffocating oh god-_

_Stop. Breathe. It’s enough, there’s enough air. It’s not like I’m running a marathon or anything, it’ll be fine, just- just gotta match my expectations to his breathing, just gotta feel my hands and my feet, they’re still there, I’m still real, they still work even if I can’t work them, it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay…_

It wasn’t, of course. It was all back to normal, and it was terrible.

A few minutes passed before he was calm enough to think properly. _Okay, okay, focus. Focus. First things first: When is this?_

Jonah was at his computer, though he seemed to be closing whatever he was working on and preparing to get up. Oh, probably something with budgeting; Elias could see a lot of numbers in columns.

_Must be a Tuesday, then,_ he thought dimly. _Ha, guess that’s the first question answered: it’s Tuesday._

Back to focusing on his surroundings, trying to ignore the way his thoughts lurched as Jonah shifted him into a standing position. He was in his- in Jonah’s- in the office, not a prison cell or the Panopticon, which was probably a good sign, right? If this was before the Unknowing there’d be a lot more that he could save.

_What’s that sound?_

Once he actually paid attention to the loud whining noise that had, now that he thought of it, been making it really hard to focus this whole time, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it first.

_A fire alarm?_

He couldn’t remember a fire happening at the Institute before. A drill? No, they didn’t really do fire drills around here—they weren’t much for the whole employee safety thing, to be honest.

_Maybe I should check in on Jonah._

Elias and Jonah’s minds were never melded together, not exactly. He could see through Jonah’s eyes all the time, and he could See through Jonah’s Eye powers a lot of the time, but he couldn’t hear what the guy was thinking in any detail. He could figure out Jonah’s general emotional state, though—because _those_ were the emotions his body actually responded to, because sometimes life was unfair like that—and he could tune in to the Eye stuff a bit more if he concentrated.

(Elias was pretty sure it worked the same the other way around, too. Pretty sure. Jonah definitely had access to all of Elias’s senses, and seemed to be vaguely aware of Elias himself whenever he got really angry or upset or afraid, but he never reacted to the specific thoughts that Elias was thinking. Back in the apocalypse Jon had confirmed that it took a massive amount of effort for Jonah to actually turn the Eye inward and Look at Elias; he wouldn’t bother scrutinizing the extra mind that came with his host body, not without a good reason. Elias’s secrets were probably safe for now, as long as he didn’t do anything too stupid. Probably.)

Jonah was…alert. Curious? Great, that wasn’t very informative. The guy spent nearly all his time being either curious or smug, that was kind of his whole _thing_.

His eyes had gone unfocused, though, gazing blindly off towards the walls even as he stood and walked to the door. _What are you Looking at, then?_

_Oh._

Worms. He was Looking at worms. There were worms everywhere, and they were in the Archives, and Jon and Martin were barricaded in a little room trying not to die. Right, _right,_ they’d pulled the fire alarm down in the Archives to clear everyone out of the building.

It was worm day.

And that meant-

“Elias! Elias, we have to do something, it’s an emergency! There are flesh-eating worms everywhere and-”

That meant Sasha James—the real one, _the real one_ —had just narrowly avoided skidding into him as she barreled down the hallway and into the office.

_Shit. I am so not ready to deal with this yet._

* * *

Elias hadn’t really known Sasha James when she was alive, but he had felt an aching sort of sympathy for her after she died, had watched with gnawing, restless grief as everyone at the Institute smiled and waved at her murderer and called it Sasha.

The thing that took her had skipped Elias when it was handing out the false memories. He didn’t know if it had done it on purpose to torment the one guy who couldn’t speak up about it, or if it just hadn’t realized that he existed. He didn’t know which option he would have preferred. But he _did_ know what she had looked like, what she had sounded like, how she had greeted her boss’s boss in the hallways. Things Jon and Martin hadn’t known until he told them in the apocalypse to tearful reactions.

Things even Jonah hadn’t known. Oh, he’d _Known_ that she’d been replaced, he had _Watched_ it happen while Elias tried to look away, he could _See_ the Stranger’s creature plain as day behind its mask—but he could never actually remember Sasha James’s real face afterwards, and it drove him crazy. Good. He deserved all that frustration and so much more.

Elias hated him for letting her die.

The worst part was that there’d been no malice behind it. It wasn’t even on purpose; he hadn’t murdered her as some part of his grand evil plan. He just straight up didn’t care what happened to her, as long as he made it out unharmed and Jon made it out harmed.

Literally all he would have had to do was grab her hand when they ran from that wall of worms. It’s not like he didn’t see it coming.

_And they say chivalry wasn’t dead yet in your time._

And here she was now, running next to him and towards her death again. He couldn’t see the face he remembered, because _someone_ couldn’t be arsed to look back at his employees now and then to make sure they were keeping up, but he could hear her footsteps and her frantic breathing close by.

_Shit._

He’d never used his powers under pressure before, and this was a lot of pressure.

_Shit._

At least his heart was pounding, from all the running if nothing else. He didn’t think he could have taken this sitting down, not without going absolutely insane from the disconnect between his mind and body. It was almost worth having to deal with the illusion that he was about to trip and fall all the time, because he was going really fast and he couldn’t control his legs.

_Shit, shit, shit…_

And at least they were fear-based powers, so it’s not like he had to calm down and find his inner peace or whatever to use them anyway. Freaking out was an advantage. He would have loved to wring his hands or bite his nails or tighten his grip on something until it broke or even just _tremble_ , but he could settle for fidgeting with the phantom threads he felt all around him—strengthening them, redirecting them, layering them over each other and weaving his own panic into them until they were his.

Desperately tying himself to Sasha, mostly. Binding them together as best he could, before…

_God, there’s no time…_

He was starting to get- no, to feel like he _should_ be getting a headache from the Beholding’s weird split-screen effect on his vision. The rest of the Archives staff had fled into the tunnels by now, and Jonah was devoting a lot of precious attention to keeping track of them down where his Eyes couldn’t see straight. It was hard for Elias to focus on spinning silk when he was being bombarded with constant worm updates, but he couldn’t try to tune it all out. He needed to keep track of how far they were from that spot up ahead where they had turned that corner, and the worms had been there, and he had gone left towards the fire suppression system while she went right towards Artifact Storage.

He took all his fear, his desperation, his _helplessness,_ and threaded them onto the silk strands like prayer beads.

_Sasha, when you dodge, dodge to the left,_ he prayed. _Stick with me. Please_.

Jonah could See it coming for them, and in just a few seconds Elias would see it too.

_Jonah, please, just this once, pretend to be a decent guy and take her with you when you run._ _She’s one of yours, Jonah, she belongs to the Eye, you hate the Stranger don’t you, you hate the Corruption bringing its filth into your temple, you see everything around here so please see her through this…_

It was close.

_Please._

It was squirming.

_Please._

He was scared.

_No one deserves what happened to her._

All too soon, they were around the corner, and there was a floor-to-ceiling mass of writhing death bearing down on them from the other end of the hallway. It was even worse than Elias remembered. Sasha screamed. He could hear his own voice too, shouting in pretty convincing fake alarm.

The worms closed in on them. Elias braced himself and pulled the threads tight.

Sasha wavered a bit, then jumped to the left just before they could bury her. Jonah pretty much _had_ to grab her arm to steady her, to keep them from crashing into each other and tumbling into the swarm, and he didn’t let go once he did.

They sprinted together past the next set of fire doors and slammed them shut behind them.

* * *

Elias had a nasty side stitch by the time they were a safe distance from the mountain of worms. He was pretty sure Jonah hadn’t run him this hard the first time around. _Putting on a better show of running for your life now that you have an audience, huh? Or were you actually scared for a second there?_

Sasha seemed winded, too. She sank to the floor as they slowed down to catch their breath for a bit.

“Are…” Jonah gasped, “Are you all right?”

_Oh, hey, look at Mr. World’s Best Boss here, actually showing concern now that he’s trying to stall._ Jon was still in the tunnels. Still too far from Prentiss.

“I… _ah,_ m-my leg…I…”

Jonah Looked.

_Oh f-_

Three in her right ankle, the Eye supplied, their movements slowed by the presence of the Watcher beside her. The fastest one was almost to her knee.

“Just hold on for a second, I’ll go find something sharp.”

_Okay, I take it back, I’m glad you’re stalling, please stay with her and get them all out._

There was a fire extinguisher a little way up the hallway. Jonah broke it out of its box and took it and one of the glass shards back to Sasha, carefully wrapping one end of the glass in his handkerchief as he went.

One of the advantages of being a self-absorbed callous prick, Elias learned, was that Jonah wasn’t squeamish about impromptu surgery _at all_. He just cut right into her leg where the Eye told him to, keeping a firm grip on her with his other hand as he dug each worm out. Disturbingly, ruthlessly efficient. He wasn’t even grossed out, the freak, though Elias dearly wished he could have felt just a _little_ physically sick about it. It was just that alert curiosity again, the mild satisfaction of _discovering_ and _uncovering_ and _exposing_ the little parasites, pinning them under the gaze of his god as he crushed them each in turn. Sasha, for her part, was pretty stoic about the whole thing, wincing a little here and there but mostly holding still.

Jonah let her lean on him as they staggered the rest of the way to the boiler room, the fire extinguisher in his other hand. _Stalling, stalling, stalling._ He laid her down against a wall near the door, fussed over her ankle a bit, told her to keep pressure on it as _she_ told _him_ to forget about her and flip the switch. He kept one Eye on the trapdoor in Jon’s office the whole time.

_Come on, man, he’s already plenty scared, they took one out of his leg all the way back before the tunnels, you don’t need to do this to him, you don’t need to mark Tim up too…_

Elias even tried threading a few weak little silk strands between his hand and the manual release switch, but his mind was frazzled and fraying from everything with Sasha, and half his vision was distractingly focused on Jon’s office and the tunnels, and Jonah had already made up his mind not to pull it yet. When Elias tried to pull the strings tight, they just snapped.

_Damn._

When Jonah finally did get over to the controls for the fire system, he took his sweet time pretending to be panicked and confused about how to work the manual release. _(One lever. Clearly labeled. Seriously. No one is this flustered in an emergency, especially not you.)_ It wasn’t so much time that Sasha would get suspicious, of course…but it was just enough for Jon and Tim to come face-to-face with their worst nightmare.

_Sorry, guys. I tried._

The rest of the day went about the same as the first time around, with Elias being paraded around in front of an infinite stream of paramedics and ECDC workers and cops—a lot more cops once Martin burst into the Archives yelling about Gertrude’s body.

It was too much. Last time Elias had just felt kind of numbly afraid for the whole attack and just numb afterwards, retreating deep into his mind as soon as Sasha got to his office and distantly watching Jonah pilot him around. This time he’d been way more present, and he found himself _utterly exhausted_ as soon as the danger had passed. It was all a blur now. He could barely hear anything that anyone was saying. He wouldn’t even be standing right now if he had any say in the matter.

One thing did stick out in his mind, though. Something Sasha had said when they were loading Jon and Tim into ambulances and she was looking on in horror at their injuries, waiting her turn to go talk to the people in hazmat suits about her leg.

When they called her over to be examined, she had turned to him before she went, looked him right in Jonah’s eyes, and said, “Thanks, Elias. For, um… I-I think you saved my life back there.”

It stayed with him as he gave up on paying any real attention to anything and let his captor carry him through the rest of the day, as they watched the ECDC dispose of Prentiss’s worm-ridden corpse, as Jonah lied through Elias’s teeth about Gertrude to the police and to Jon…

Just… _Thanks, Elias. I think you saved my life back there._

For hours, the only coherent thought he could form was _You’re welcome._

* * *

“Three down, eleven to go.”

Jonah Magnus was draped across a chaise longue in his drawing room, celebrating his first real victory with a glass of wine…

_Goddamn pretentious Bond villain rat bastard. Who does this? Who does this unironically?_

…And, by extension, so was Elias Bouchard.

Jonah took another sip and let out a sigh of contentment. “Come to think of it,” he mused, fixing his cold eyes on the faint reflection of Elias’s face in the glass, “ _you’ve_ been awfully emotional today, haven’t you? I don’t think I’ve seen you that agitated since the day Gertrude _retired.”_

Elias froze. Metaphorically, at least. It just isn’t the _same_ when your blood can’t run cold.

_Shit, when did you start actually paying attention to me? Are you listening to every word I’m thinking right now?_

“What’s the matter? Afraid of a few worms?” Jonah chuckled. “Surely you didn’t _really_ think I’d let any of them under my skin. What do you take me for?”

_Ah. Never mind. I get it. I see what this is._

“Or were you hoping they’d catch me?”

_Really? Really. This is what we’re doing right now?_

Jonah smirked. “Ah, maybe that’s it. After all, by this point I would have thought you’d welcome something burrowing through my eyes into your brain.”

_Okay, no, screw you, I’m not listening to this._

“I suppose it would have been quick, at least. Perhaps it would have felt like a new pair of optic nerves wriggling their way towards the back of your skull, and that wasn’t so bad, _was it?”_ The question was punctuated with a _very_ vivid memory.

_God. Fuck. Ew. I’m not your personal vending machine, dude. Go find someone else to snack on if you’re so hungry from literally just looking at worms all day._

“Mm,” Jonah sighed, and Elias felt a warm, almost prickly sensation spread from behind his eyes down the sides of his face as the bastard savored his revulsion and horror. _That_ one wasn’t a human emotion, but he was still depressingly familiar with what the physical side of it felt like.

_Don’t you “mm” me, you son of a bitch. I hope you choke on that. Prick._

“Sorry to disappoint, but I’m afraid I’ll be keeping you around for a while yet.” Jonah laughed a little then, low and malicious and _annoying as hell._ “This is only the beginning.”

_I swear to god if I have to hear one more word of this smug evil horseshit tonight I will find a way to make you knock that wine bottle over onto yourself. Should have gone with white wine, asshole, you’ll never get the stains out once I’m done with you._

But Jonah was blessedly quiet after that, keeping his thoughts to himself as he finished the first glass and poured himself a second. He was happy, though; Elias could feel the warmth of his satisfaction in his chest, and it absolutely disgusted him.

Until his thoughts drifted back to Sasha James, that is. _She made it. She actually made it out. She’s going to show up to work tomorrow with the same face she’s always had, and they’re all going to know her, and there won’t be anything else wearing her name and her life. And I did that. I did that, and you know what? Fine, let’s be happy. You be happy about your thing, and I’ll be happy about mine, and we’ll call it a draw for now._

So Jonah sat celebrating, and Elias sat basking in what he’d decided were definitely his own warm fuzzy feelings of triumph. Close enough, at least.

Eventually, Jonah laughed at some private joke and raised the glass.

“A toast. To the new Archivist.”

_And his three very alive assistants, thank you very much. Cheers, you awful bastard._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, still appallingly non-sweary, through gritted teeth, as I type, erase, and re-type the actual f word several times before it sticks: Elias can have...many a swearing. _As a treat._
> 
> So I was going to listen to my logical human brain and just dump the poor guy into mid-season 4 originally, because that would be shorter and I am afraid of commitment, but then my sad emotional monkey brain was like PEOPLE WHO GOT KILLED AND REPLACED BY THEIR MURDERERS AND NO ONE NOTICED SOLIDARITY, so here we are starting a long thing. Rip.
> 
> Thanks for the comments and kudos and stuff! Good to know there are other people here in this very small niche.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon has a bad time, but with one less enemy and one more friend on his side than before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific content warnings:  
> -Paranoia  
> -Brief existential dread  
> -Multiple people having a bit of a bad mental health day (though not super severe)

After that first night, Jonah went right back to acting like Elias didn’t exist. Like he’d _never_ existed. Elias tried silently screaming at him, cursing him out in his head, even letting himself be afraid of the Eye just to catch the attention of the one person in the world who might acknowledge him. There wasn’t even the ghost of a response to any of it.

There had been enough conversation in the apocalypse for Elias to forget just how goddamn lonely this had felt. And boring. God, it was boring.

The nights were the worst. Lying awake in the dark waiting for Jonah to fall asleep was the _worst._

For one thing, Elias was completely divorced from the whole process—sure, he could feel his eyelids getting heavy, and his breathing slowing down, and his muscles relaxing, but it wasn’t _him_ falling asleep. And he’d never quite got the hang of winding down his thoughts at the same rate as Jonah’s. More often than not sleep came on like a thunderclap, blindsiding him in the middle of whatever he was thinking about and giving him just a couple seconds to adjust as his mind shut down.

Then there were the thoughts. For someone who only existed as a disembodied consciousness, unconsciousness could be…hard to stomach sometimes. Most nights, Elias’s last moments before sleep were filled with a weird sort of panic— _Do I even exist when we’re asleep? Are we just him all night? Shit, wait, don’t do this to me yet—_ before Jonah dragged him into oblivion. Waiting around for that to happen wasn’t the best way to end an evening.

Sometimes he got through it by trying to revel in the fear. Being faced with an eight-hour-long death could make you feel oddly alive in the instant before it started.

These days, though, he mostly tried to spend the time plotting against Jonah. It was quiet, after all, and his enemy wasn’t paying much attention to…well, anything, really.

But with Jon and Tim out for nearly a month to recover from the worms, and then the slow return to normal Archive work afterwards, there really hadn’t been much plotting to do lately. And that sent Elias down a spiral of second-guessing himself.

Obviously saving Sasha was a huge victory for Sasha, but Jon was still marked by the Corruption, and even if the Not-Them didn’t mark him for the Stranger, the circus would get around to it eventually. Not exactly a win for the world. And it wasn’t like Jonah had been actively trying to kill her; Elias had just kind of snuck in a little win on the side without interfering with the grand scheme of things. Actually going _against_ Jonah’s plans was going to take some doing.

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Elias had never been much of a doer. As long as he had a place to stay and food to eat, he’d always been content to just…coast along. He’d coasted all the way through his degree on his parents’ dime, and he’d coasted through the first year or so afterwards before they cut him off for mostly getting high all the time at a string of dead-end jobs instead of, you know, starting up a respectable career. He’d coasted through his job interview with James Wright because the bastard had ulterior motives; he was painfully aware of that by now. And when he was working at the Institute, he saw the chance to take a pay raise he absolutely didn’t deserve and become Wright’s assistant, and naturally he took it. Why bother making something of yourself if someone else is ready to step up and do the work for you?

And then that all came crashing down. He may have been reluctant to make anything of himself, but he sure as hell didn’t like what Jonah had made of him instead.

If he’d just had a little more ambition before the Institute, instead of taking the first non-minimum wage job that called him back. If he’d just had little more drive to figure out why things didn’t quite seem right once he was there…

…Well. He might have ended up more like Jon, which didn’t seem like a great way to be right now anyway.

* * *

“Supplemental. I’ve been watching Martin,” Jon half-whispered into a tape recorder, alone in the archives with a cold cup of tea sitting forsaken on his desk. It was past 8 pm, but he was too wound up to leave his post.

He glared at the tea.

He’d almost drunk it without thinking earlier, a few minutes after he found it sitting on his desk. He normally wouldn’t have felt so strongly about Martin’s tea, but something about today just gave him an oddly intense craving for the comfort of a warm drink when he saw it. Maybe it was the promise of normalcy after the attack. His hand had seemed to reach for it on its own.

He’d stopped himself, of course, a chill running down his spine as he realized it could be a trap. He hadn’t watched Martin make that tea. Technically, he didn’t even know it was Martin who had left it—he thought he’d glimpsed a little bit of cobweb on the handle, though he couldn’t find it again when he looked closely. Had someone unfamiliar with the Archives used a mug Martin normally didn’t use, one that had been gathering dust? Even if it _had_ been Martin, anyone could have tampered with it while it was sitting unsupervised on his desk. He had to learn to be more careful.

The most chilling possibility, of course, was that _Martin himself_ had poisoned or drugged the tea. Jon didn’t want to think it, but…Gertrude was murdered. Murdered by a human, maybe someone she had worked with, maybe even someone she had trusted.

Anyone could be a suspect, and that meant no unvetted food or drink until he could rule out whoever had made it.

Jon sank down into his chair after he finished recording his notes, holding his head in his hands. He had to do something. He had to do _everything,_ and he had to do it all himself. He couldn’t trust anyone to help, not yet, not when there was something—or worse, some _one_ —going around shooting Head Archivists for god only knows what reasons.

After a moment spent blinking back tears of exhaustion and fear, he sighed and reached for a file full of newspaper articles and internal memos from the week of Gertrude’s death. The sooner he could solve this, the sooner things could go back to normal.

* * *

The problem with using Web powers to convince a paranoid arachnophobe that his friends aren’t secretly plotting to kill him, Elias reflected, was that it was _literally impossible._ It was like trying to stop an ice cream cone from melting using a blowtorch.

It didn’t help that he couldn’t even communicate with the guy in the first place. What was he supposed to do, send some spiders as a sign or something? That’d go over _great._ He couldn’t force Jonah to say or type or write anything unusual without getting found out. And as much as he’d like to write “DUDE CHILL” in huge silk letters above Jon’s desk, his threads were more like invisible metaphysical ties, not actual string that he could pull a Charlotte’s Web with.

Jonah was no help, of course. Even without a potential Stranger mark to fuel, he was having fun just sitting back and enjoying the view as his new Archivist all but threw himself into the service of the Eye. Elias even caught him reading over some of his old diary entries from, like, 1820 or some shit, one night when Jon was alone in the Archives having a bad time.

“2nd March. Light snow in the morning,” one passage read. “R. Smirke wrote to admonish me for my zeal in researching the great Powers. His letter warned that this quest for knowledge may ruin me. The concern comes far too late, of course, for I fear I am already lost. But in this loss I am found; for there is within me a hunger that no bread will sate, and I shall pursue my new purpose alone if I must, if it means I might be satisfied.”

_Try not to cut yourself on that edge there, you self-absorbed pompous git. God, I wish I had some eyes to roll at you right now._

No answer. No acknowledgement. Just a little chuckle from Jonah a moment later as he Watched Jon have a little breakdown and fondly reminisced about his own descent into complete assholery.

_Goddammit. There has to be something I can do._

* * *

“We have to do _something_ , Tim,” Martin whispered after Jon left for a meeting one afternoon. “I’m not sure he’s eaten lunch all week.”

“I mean, what _can_ we do?” Tim sighed. “You’ve seen how he scuttles away into the shadows whenever anyone tries to talk to him. Plus, with all the caffeine in his blood, I’m surprised he doesn’t keel over from a heart attack every time we say his _name_. Trying to sit him down for a talk might actually kill him.”

“Come on, Tim, don’t joke like that. He’s been through a lot lately.”

“Only as much as the rest of us! And you don’t see any of us tuning into…weird stalker hermits, do you? We’re all busy dealing with our stuff like normal people. He’s just gonna have to figure out how to handle himself on his own, like a grownup.”

_“Tim.”_

“Hey, guys?” Sasha piped up from across the room. “Sorry to interrupt your _obviously_ very rational and productive talk about how weird Jon’s been acting, but can I get your opinion on something?”

“Hm?” Tim walked over to her desk, only to find a screen full of police reports peppered with Gertrude’s name. “Oh, not you too,” he groaned.

“Yes, me too,” Sasha teased, though her face fell back into a frown when she turned to the computer. “Gertrude had enemies who wanted her dead. I think we’d all like to know whether _we_ have the same enemies.”

“I still say she offended some ancient old bat at Bingo Night or something, but I’ll bite,” Tim said. “Let’s hear your clues, Sherlock.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Well, my _dear_ Watson, I was just wondering…” She pointed at what looked like a description of the crime scene. “If it was a personal grudge against Gertrude, then why, pray tell, was the carpet in the Archives soaked with petrol when the police got here?”

_“What?”_ Martin stammered from across the room.

“Yep. This wasn’t just a murder; it was attempted arson too.”

Tim raised an eyebrow. “So, what? You think it was someone who had a problem with the whole Institute, or-?”

“I don’t know, that’s what I wanted to ask you guys. Do you think that seems like a really elaborate attack on Gertrude, or something…bigger?”

“I-” Tim hesitated. “It does sound a bit _extreme_ for someone who just had an issue with one little old lady.”

“W-Well, so does _shooting her_ ,” Martin pointed out, “but they seem to have managed that one.” He paused to think for a bit. “Though for all we know, they might have set out to start a fire and then attacked her when she caught them...”

The room fell into an awkward silence as they considered that.

“How do we tell Jon?”

“We don’t!” Tim snapped. “Remember how he was about birthday candles even before all this? Do you really want to see if it’s physically possible to make him twitchier than he already is?”

“How about this: for now, we just look into any enemies Gertrude might have had at the time, and if we find anyone that seems like the arson type, we can mention that little detail to Jon when we tell him about our leads,” Sasha suggested. “He’ll probably feel less overwhelmed if he’s got something kind of solid to go on.”

Tim sighed again. “That’s an awful lot of ‘we’ and ‘us’ I’m hearing here.”

Sasha laughed. “Do you seriously have anything better to do right now?”

He shrugged. “…I guess not.”

“That settles it, then,” Sasha said triumphantly. “We can meet tomorrow sometime to swap leads and organize info.”

“Fine.” Tim rolled his eyes but still shot Sasha a grin before heading back to his desk.

Martin nodded. “So, until then, I’ll just keep putting lunch next to Jon until he remembers to eat it? I guess?”

Tim clapped him on the shoulder as he went past. “Good luck with that, and if you’re going to that sandwich place, I’m coming along. I’ll help carry stuff, yeah?”

The rest of the afternoon passed in relative peace, though Sasha was still feeling too tense about the Gertrude situation to just _leave_ at 5. But she _had_ eaten lunch, so…still doing better than Jon, she supposed.

* * *

“Jon? You’re still here?”

Jon jumped at Sasha’s voice, then scrambled to shove a bunch of fallen papers back into the folder he had dropped. She tried to help him pick them up, but he batted her hand away.

“I could say the same about you,” he grumbled. “What are _you_ doing here at this hour?”

“Oh, I, um…” Sasha looked down at the small stack of papers clutched in her hands. “Actually, I…was looking for statements from around the time Gertrude died.”

Jon blinked. “What?”

“Well, I-I got to thinking…maybe whoever shot her was being investigated by the Institute at the time. I thought if I could get a handle on what she was working on near the end, then maybe…”

Jon muttered something under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” he said with a pointed glare.

“Jon.”

He sighed, a pained and conflicted look on his face, then muttered a little louder: “I _said_ that wouldn’t help if it was an inside job.”

“You think…You think it was someone _here?”_

Jon nodded. His eyes were starting to look a little misty, though he did a decent job of trying to hide it.

“Is that what you’ve been looking into since you got back?” Another scared-looking nod. In that moment, he looked so small, and so exhausted, and so nervous, and he was glancing around like-

_Oh._

“Jon,” she asked, as softly and gently as possible, “are you worried that someone at the Institute wants to…to hurt you? Is _that_ why you’ve been so…so… _invested_ in solving this?”

“I haven’t been- I’m _fine_ , Sasha,” he insisted.

“Jon, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you are _not_ fine. We’ve all been worried about you. You haven’t been taking care of yourself lately…Martin was trying to make sure you ate something earlier, but…” She glanced at an untouched sandwich and cup of tea on Jon’s desk.

“And if you’ve figured out why I’m so ‘invested’ in this, then you know I can’t just eat or drink anything that anyone around here hands to me!” Jon snapped.

“Right, because Martin makes all the poisoned drinks around here. It’s the perfect crime,” Sasha joked, trying to lighten the mood.

Silence.

“Wait. You’re being serious.”

Jon looked at his feet.

“Jon. Why would _Martin_ want to _kill_ you? He’s super nice to you! All the time!”

“But…but what if that’s all an act, and he’s really-”

“If he’s enough of an evil mastermind to pull off an act like that, wouldn’t he also be enough of an evil mastermind to, I don’t know, _not_ report Gertrude’s body to the police himself when they’d probably given up looking by now?” 

“Uh…”

“And Tim! Was that a picture of Tim’s _house_ you dropped earlier? _”_

“I, um-”

“Jon, if Tim wanted you dead, he could have just left you behind with the worms and escaped by himself. He came back for you and Martin, didn’t he?”

Jon was silent.

“I guess…I guess that just leaves me, doesn’t it?” Sasha said with a nervous laugh. “I-I’m not really sure how to-”

“No, no, you’re right.” Jon sighed, long and deep. “You’re right. If you’d killed Gertrude and were plotting to kill me, you’d be trying to pin it on someone else, not prove their innocence.” He stared at his tape recorder for a long time, looking almost ready to cry from relief or fear or exhaustion, it was hard to tell which, then took a deep breath and continued: “It…it probably wasn’t anyone in the Archives. None of us even worked closely with Gertrude, now that I think of it.”

Sasha sighed. “So. That just leaves, what, 8 billion more people who could have done it? Piece of cake.”

Jon _almost_ laughed, but his voice hitched a little in the middle of it. He turned away to wipe his face.

“Hey, hey, we’ll get through this, okay?” Sasha reached out a hand, but couldn’t decide whether or not to try putting it on Jon’s shoulder. It ended up just hovering awkwardly in the air. “We got through Prentiss’s attack, didn’t we? We can handle one human with a gun.”

Jon took a shaky breath. “Don’t…I’m _fine_ , Sasha. Just a little sleep-deprived, is all.”

“Jon, you don’t have to do this all alone. You have three perfectly good archival assistants—and don’t you dare crack a joke about Martin right now, I saw how impressed you were with the corkscrew idea—” Jon half-sobbed, half-chuckled at that. Sasha smiled a little. “You’re allowed to let us, well, _assist_ you, you know.”

“I…” He met her eyes for a second before glancing away again. “I’ll think about it,” he mumbled, almost inaudibly.

Sasha breathed a little sigh of relief. “Good. But for now? Let’s both get some sleep. We can solve a murder in the morning.”

“…Fine.”

Jon sheepishly put his stalker folder away in a desk drawer while Sasha helped arrange the statements and memos they’d both compiled, then they both gathered their things and left.

Jon was pretty quiet the whole time, but he did turn to her just before they went their separate ways.

“Sasha?”

“Hm?”

“Text me when you get home safe, all right?”

Sasha grinned. “Only if you do the same.”

“Deal.”

* * *

The next morning, the Archives staff were gathered in Jon’s office, writing “MURDER SUSPECTS?” on a whiteboard they’d scrounged up from somewhere. Elias sat in his office, Watching them through Jonah’s eyes with a smile in his heart and a scowl on his face.

Maybe saving Sasha _had_ been a win for the world after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Finally got a third chapter out! Thanks to everyone who commented on chapters 1-2, it was nice motivation ^_^
> 
> Fun trivia fact: saving Sasha pretty much eliminates every event from season 2! And some of the ones from seasons 3 and 4! It's fun! I'm having so much fun trying to figure out how to make plot points happen! Fun is what this is!
> 
> (I actually am having some fun with it, and I've got a bit of a plan now, lol)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elias tries to reason with an old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Help, you guys, it ended up so long and rambling.
> 
> Not much in the way of content warnings for this one, though there's a little workplace hazing/bullying going on in flashbacks here and there.

Jonah sighed and rubbed Elias’s temples.

“So, just to clarify, you got off at Hyde Park but then, next thing you knew, you were in Clapham?”

“Yes, it just- it just doesn’t- I must have gotten turned around?” stammered the voice on the other end of the phone. “Maybe it wasn’t Hyde Park. It couldn’t have been…”

_Wow, look at your terrifying evil genius. Humanity quivers before a plan that hinges on giving directions to someone trapped by the actual living embodiment of getting lost._

Elias, meanwhile, found himself full of weird manic energy. Mornings with Jonah were usually pretty boring; he spent the first half hour or so of each workday sipping his disgusting bitter coffee and flipping through paperwork to look busy while he…prayed? Fed? Whatever you call looking around London for people who were hiding something and casually glancing at them through the eyes of random strangers until they started to wonder if _everyone_ could tell what they were up to, then closing his human eyes and feeling how the Beholding thrummed contentedly in his head as it echoed back visions of their guilt and paranoia. You know, like you do.

But _this_ morning, Jonah was actually getting frustrated. And it was great. His gaze was focused squarely on a single confused real estate agent who, astonishingly, was somehow _farther_ from the Institute than she was 45 minutes ago when she first called for help with directions. Add in the fact that Elias had a few counter-plans involving said real estate agent, and suddenly mornings were interesting again.

“I don’t know what came over me…I must have gotten back on the wrong Metro line…Twice? I’m so sorry.”

_And if one of those was because of some spiderwebs tugging her toward the other platform, well, that’s just how things go sometimes, isn’t it, Jonah? Thanks for giving me a direct line to her, by the way. Sucker._

“Oh, it’s no problem, we’ll get it sorted out,” Jonah continued, gritting his teeth a little.

Elias hadn’t originally planned to make it hard for Helen to even reach the Institute to give her statement. He knew it wouldn’t change anything in the long run. Jonah was determined to get her there eventually, and Jonah’s _real_ guest knew an invitation to the Archives when it saw one; she wouldn’t be taken by any weird doors while Elias was stalling.

But the discovery that being on the phone with someone apparently put them within his sphere of influence—that had been a bit too much to resist. And the more Jonah focused in on her, the easier it was to figure out just how to move the threads. So he let himself be petty for a bit.

“I just- I need to find the station again, then…I came from that street on the left, I think? No, wait, I don’t remember that tree…”

Jonah sighed again. “Look, how about this: Just stay where you are, and I’ll come to you.”

A short while later Elias was in Clapham, watching a flustered Helen Richardson apologize profusely for all the trouble. If he tried, he could almost ignore the pleasant warmth that had been gathering around his eyes since Jonah first saw how upset she was about the first impression she’d made. He was _not_ looking forward to the awkward taxi ride back to the Institute.

As Jonah held the taxi door open for Helen, he Looked back to a narrow alleyway down the block, where a familiar-yet-unfamiliar face was peering out from behind a door that shouldn’t have been there. A face that hurt to look at, in more ways than one.

_Michael…_

* * *

_The Magnus Institute, 1992_

Elias cleared his throat.

“You ever gonna be done with that copier, or should I go see if I can buy the Archives a new one and have it delivered before you finish here?”

Michael jumped. “M-Mr. Bouchard? Sorry, I was just-”

“Woah, woah, back up. When did I become _Mr. Bouchard?_ I think I’m still Elias even after transferring departments?”

“Sorry, Elias. I just- I’m trying to copy these statements, but a few of them keep coming out all garbled like this…” Michael held up a very unreadable and extremely cursed-looking piece of paper.

Elias sighed. “Lemme guess. They’re for Emma.”

“Um, yes, actually. She wanted to have her own to refer to while she does follow-ups. And another copy to make notes on, and one for Ms. Robinson to make notes on. And I’ve been trying to type up some of the old handwritten ones to make them easier to read, but…” Michael giggled nervously as he continued, “the computer kept crashing on this one so I, I had to go back to the typewriter…”

“Ah, right.” Elias rolled his eyes. “And once you’re done with all that, you’re going to pick up some headlight fluid for her, right?”

“I…what?”

Elias leaned in closer. “I’m pretty sure she’s hazing you a bit, dude,” he said in a dramatic stage whisper. “You know, giving you busywork just for a laugh? You don’t have to do everything she says, you know. She’s not even your boss. Let her do her own copying, yeah?”

“I, well…” Michael mumbled, looking down at his feet. “It’s no trouble, really. And I like to make things easier on them, you know? Emma’s always so busy, and Ms. Robinson’s eyes aren’t what they used to be…”

“I’m just saying, if you let people walk all over you like that, they’ll eat you alive someday. Just a bit of advice.” Elias clapped Michael on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about hogging the copier. I’ll tell Wright it was broken and get out of this stupid budget project for a bit. Though if I were you, I’d just steer clear of the ones that don’t copy. That’s what I always did with weird books in Artefact Storage,” he added with a shudder.

_“Elias.”_

“What?” Elias asked innocently.

“You’re slacking off in your new job already? You…You just transferred!” Michael looked almost _offended;_ Elias had to suppress a laugh.

“It’s fine, the old man doesn’t care anyway,” Elias laughed. “Between you and me, I think he just wanted an assistant so he wouldn’t be lonely. There’s…really not a lot to do, you know? I’m basically getting paid to smile and nod when he rambles on about all the ghosts he supposedly fought back in his day.”

“Still…” Michael frowned a bit, then took a deep breath and said, “M-Maybe you could try taking things more seriously sometimes? Or at least take _people_ more seriously.” His voice wavered a bit. “If- If you keep blowing people off, you’ll end up pushing everyone away.”

Elias blinked in surprise, then put on a goofy smile to hide it. “Ha, now _that’s_ what I’m talking about! Look at you, giving people a piece of your mind already!”

“Elias, I…”

“You keep that up, _Mr. Shelley,”_ Elias winked. “But maybe try it on Emma next time.”

“I…” Michael sighed. “Sure.”

“See you around, kid,” Elias said cheerfully, heading back towards the office. “And good luck with the copying, seriously.”

* * *

“You believe me, then?”

“I… yes. Yes, I think I do.”

Jonah sat in his office, Watching with growing anticipation as Jon finished taking Helen Richardson’s statement. Elias did the same, though they weren’t anticipating _quite_ the same thing.

“One thing, though. You say you don’t remember the man’s name…”

“I… I think he told me, but I just, I…”

_Any second now…_

“It wasn’t Michael, was it?”

“Yes! Michael! That was it! Do you know him?”

As soon as the yellow door appeared, Elias felt the fabric of reality shift to accommodate it, strands twisting and warping and catching on its edges. It took all he had to keep control of his own threads, to keep them from being drawn into the tangled mess that was forming just inside the corridors.

“We’ll make some enquiries and get back to you, Ms. Richardson. Thank you for your time.”

“Right, well… I’ll just leave you to it, then.” Helen stood and took a step along the warped threads towards the door.

_Stop._

She faltered as Elias pulled her attention back to the door she’d come in through.

_This way. It’s this way. You came in by that bookshelf, remember? Think before you open._

Elias had expected this to be simple. Instead, he found himself in a sort of tug-of-war with the Distortion. Helen was caught between them, wavering between the two doors.

“Ms. Richardson?” Jon ventured. “Is something the matter?”

“I, um, I was just…” Her eyes darted between the doors and finally seemed to take in what she was seeing. She screamed and backed up into Jon’s desk, knocking some papers to the floor.

“M-Ms. Richardson?” Jon yelped.

“There,” Helen gasped, pointing. “That’s- That’s it. Right? It wasn’t there before. Please tell me you can see it too.”

Jon finally seemed to notice the change.

“I- how- there’s never been a door there,” he said, jumping to his feet in alarm.

The door creaked open to reveal something that was _almost_ a tall man with curly blond hair.

Michael gave a little echoing laugh as he stepped into the office. “I was wondering how long it would take you to notice. Your eyes aren’t very sharp yet, Archivist.”

“Y-You’re Michael, then?” Jon stammered.

“Now _that_ is a question.”

“Why are you here?”

Michael blinked. “I thought that would be obvious,” he said, pointing one long finger at Helen. “It’s rude of you to try to take what’s mine. I had her first.”

“I’m not- I just- She doesn’t _belong_ to anyone!”

Another broken laugh. “Is that so?” Michael mused, taking a step towards Jon and Helen.

Jon made a scared little gurgling noise at Michael’s approach, but stood his ground in front of Helen. Helen, meanwhile, had grabbed the stapler from Jon’s desk and was brandishing it like a weapon while she shouted for Michael to stay back.

Elias was preparing to intervene when the other door, the normal one, burst open to reveal a very concerned-looking Sasha, with Tim close behind her.

“What’s wrong? Are you guys okay?”

“Sasha! Tim! Get back!” Jon shouted, but Michael had already turned to look at them.

“Oh!” Sasha gasped. “You’re…”

Michael grinned at her. “You lived,” he said simply.

 _Yes, she did,_ Elias thought, pouncing on the opportunity to distract the Distortion. He gently, cautiously tugged Michael’s attention more to Sasha and tried to pull Jon and Helen out of the door behind her. _She thinks of you as the mysterious thing that saved her, and she might keep thinking that as long as you don’t eat anyone in front of her._

“Y-yeah…” Sasha said, nervously stepping a little farther into the room. “Thanks…Thanks for saving me? I-I don’t think we would have made it if not for…”

Jon was slowly, warily leading Helen towards the door, staying between Helen and Michael as he crept behind Sasha. He was…not being stealthy or subtle. Michael glanced over Sasha’s shoulder at them.

_Leave them. Please. Let her go for now. Look, they’re both really scared of you. You have enough fear for today. Let her stay on the outside a little longer._

Jon handed Helen off to Tim at the door, whispering “Walk her home, okay? I’ll try to keep him here, but he’s been following her. And _don’t_ go through any doors unless you know for sure what’s on the other side.” Tim looked confused but started to lead Helen back out of the Archives anyway, glancing back over his shoulder at Jon as they went.

 _“Archivist,”_ Michael said coldly.

“I, uh…” Jon took a deep, shaky breath. “She-She came here for help. I’m responsible for her safety while she’s here. It’s- It’s part- part of my job.” He raised his eyes to meet Michael’s. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave her alone.”

“Oh, are you going to fight me?”

_Don’t hurt him. You’ll never get him to half-trust you again._

“Um?” Sasha interjected. “I…I’m not exactly sure what’s going on here, but um…” She shrank back as Michael looked to her again. “I was hoping we could…maybe…not fight? In here? I’m- I’m grateful to you for helping us, but I don’t…I don’t want…”

Michael took another step towards them. Jon pulled Sasha back and stepped in front of her.

“Why are you doing all this?” he asked. “You saved Sasha’s life and helped us with Prentiss, but then you trapped Ms. Richardson in a- a hallway death maze for three days! There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Just _what_ exactly are you after?” There was just the faintest hint of compulsion in his voice, an almost imperceptible quiver in some of the threads between him and Michael.

“Rhyme or reason?” Michael laughed. “You misunderstand me, Archivist. It is not in my nature to rhyme or to reason. And I _don’t_ like being interrogated.” He narrowed his eyes and started to raise a hand.

 _Michael. Come on, Michael, look at him,_ Elias thought, redirecting his threads to draw attention to the way Jon stood between the Distortion and his assistant, to the dozens of worm scars that peppered his face and arms but not hers. _He’s not like Gertrude, not enough for you to get revenge on her by hurting him. Just leave him for now. Keep up the friendly façade a little longer. There’s no rush. Please._

The staredown dragged on in silence.

 _Besides, there are better targets for you here. People who deserve your revenge._ Elias tried to reel in the threads he had near Michael, but it was hard with the way the door distorted everything.

Finally, Michael sighed and shrugged. “It’s true, I’m normally neutral. But the loss of this place would have unbalanced the struggle too early, so I intervened. As for what I want from the one who left my lair to enter yours, you really ought to know already.”

“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about. What…struggle?”

Michael started laughing uncontrollably. The sound reverberated off the walls of the office and the corridors.

“You don’t know _anything,_ do you? How…interesting.”

“That’s why I’m trying to find out. What do you mean by-”

“No more questions, Archivist.” Michael giggled. “I wouldn’t want to tarnish your ignorance prematurely.” He stepped back through his door. “I’m excited to see what happens next.”

“Wait-” Sasha began, but Michael was already gone.

* * *

_The Magnus Institute, December 1996_

Elias was vaguely aware of a crowd, and tinsel, and hors d'oeuvres, and wrapping paper with little snowmen on it, and his own voice speaking.  


“What a lovely pen. Though I do want you to know that you’re never obligated to get me anything.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said the new secretary. “I heard it was a recent promotion, and I thought you might like something with the new title on it, you know?”

“‘Elias Bouchard, Head of the Magnus Institute,’” Jonah read, turning the pen over to examine the engraving. “Would you look at that. Thank you, Rosie.”

 _If we get one more bland tasteful office gift, I’m gonna puke,_ Elias thought as he distantly watched his own hand set the pen down on a small pile of paperweights and what have you. _Except I’m not gonna puke, am I? I don’t even get that much. This is the worst Christmas party ever._

“Um, M-Mr. Bouchard?” came a hesitant voice beside him. Jonah turned to see a young face framed by curly blond hair.

_Goddammit, Michael. I’ve never been a Mr. Bouchard and I never will be. No one here is Mr. Bouchard._

“I, I got this for you,” Michael said, holding out a small wrapped gift. “I mean, it’s not- it’s kind of…silly, but I thought you might…um…”

“Thank you, Michael.” Jonah took the package with a slimy sort of smile. “Shall I open it now?”

“I-If you want to,” Michael stuttered, his now-empty hands fidgeting uselessly. “Th-Though it…it _is_ pretty silly, kind of a- kind of a joke gift, you know?” His voice broke off into a self-deprecating chuckle near the end.

“Well, now you’ve really got me wondering what it is.” Jonah neatly removed the wrapping paper to reveal a handful of black-and-green fabric.

 _Weed socks? Holy shit,_ Elias thought, suddenly invested in the conversation. _That’s- that’s brilliant. You could wear these to work under a posh business suit and no one would even notice._

Jonah paused for just long enough to put Michael on edge. More than he already was, that is.

 _Oh…right._ Elias felt a stab of mild annoyance and cruel amusement in his chest, cutting through his own flimsy, ghostly excitement. _I’m…I’m never going to wear these socks to work. I’m never going to wear these socks at all._

“Well,” Jonah said, holding the socks like you would a moldy rag. “Isn’t that… _something.”_

“L-Like I said, m-more of a- a joke gift,” Michael mumbled, withering under Jonah’s gaze. “B-Be-Because, you know, y-you always w-wanted me to stop, to stop taking everything too seriously, and, and, and I know it m-must have been hard on you, take- taking over after Mr. Wright passed, and you’ve seemed pretty t-tense lately so, so I- I thought you might, um, might want something m-more on the fun side?”

Jonah stayed quiet and let Michael ramble himself into a corner, watching his face get redder and redder as he went. Soaking up his embarrassment, probably.

“B-but it’s just a joke, you-you don’t have to wear them if, if you don’t want to.” Michael seemed to shrink to half his height. “Just…thought it’d be…S-sorry, maybe it- maybe it’s not- not really a-a work-appropriate gift…”

“Oh, no, it’s…fine,” Jonah said after slightly too long. “This is…very kind of you. Thanks, Michael.”

“R-Right!” Michael squeaked, and retreated off to a corner by the punch bowl. Jonah chuckled to himself as he watched him scurry away.

 _Oh, fuck you, that was a great gift,_ Elias snarled to the thing in his head. _Michael? Michael! I love them! You did good, kid! Come back…_

Michael didn’t come back. The rest of the evening was spent exchanging boring pleasantries with slightly intimidated employees—well, aside from the amused “Well, wasn’t that thoughtful, _Elias?”_ that Gertrude muttered in his ear as Jonah passed her on his way to hide the socks under his other stuff.

_Worst. Christmas party. Ever. God, I hate being under new management._

* * *

“Distortion.”

Elias’s voice echoed down the empty hallway, where a door that shouldn’t have been there was cracked open just enough to watch Helen and Tim disappear around a corner towards the lobby.

Michael slowly stepped out from behind the door, letting it creak the whole way. He considered Jonah carefully before he spoke.

“Overseer.”

“You can call me Elias, you know.” Elias felt his face twist into a smirk. “No need for formalities between old coworkers, wouldn’t you say?”

“You didn’t call me Michael,” Michael said with an echoing mockery of the little giggles that he used to do.

“Oh?” Jonah’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Honestly, I didn’t think you cared what I called you. You haven’t truly been Michael Shelley for some time now, after all.”

Michael laughed long and hard at that, a branching, bubbling noise that kept curling its tendrils through his voice as he spoke again.

“And you’re as much Elias Bouchard as I am, Overseer!” He flashed a sharp smile and narrowed his eyes. “For all that you care about names, you really don’t like using your own. Tell me, does it _hurt_ for a thing of It-Knows-You to live a lie? Did your master scream and writhe inside you as you carved out a place for yourself in _his_ face?”

_Michael?_

It was the first time Elias had been acknowledged in ages. A bit… _graphic_ , but still appreciated.

_You know, sometimes I wonder if there’s enough of you left in there to wonder if there’s any of me left in here. That’d be nice. Would that be nice? Never mind, maybe it wouldn’t. Not for you._

“Certainly not as much as it must hurt for a thing like you to take in someone touched by the Eye,” Jonah said, twisting Elias’s face into an exaggerated expression of pity. “You have my sympathy, _Michael_.”

Michael scowled. Elias could hear something shift deep inside the corridors.

“But I didn’t lure you here for an existential debate,” Jonah continued. I see you’ve met my new Archivist. What did you think of him?”

Michael grinned. “He’s _delightfully_ uninformed. But why keep him so ignorant? It seems a bit…counterproductive for you.”

Jonah shrugged. “It’ll be good for his training if he learns these things on his own. Besides, I want to get a better feel for how he thinks before I give him too much information. I’m hoping to avoid a repeat of Gertrude; I’m sure you understand.”

“…Of course.” It was pretty unsettling, the way that Michael’s eyes sharpened as his smile softened. Elias was used to thinking of _approachable_ and _intimidating_ as opposite ends of a spectrum, but with the Distortion they were more like two knobs that it could choose to crank all the way up at the same time. “But I don’t see how this involves…me?”

“Ah, yes.” Jonah smirked. “I wanted to propose a new arrangement that I think will benefit both of us.”

“…What… _kind_ of arrangement?”

“I have a few tasks planned for my new Archivist that may require… _emergency evacuations_ for him and his assistants,” Jonah explained. “I would like you to lend them your corridors here and there, give them doors out of difficult situations, that sort of thing.”

“Hmm…I don’t see what I get out of this.”

“Well, I’d allow you to toy with my staff a little while they travel your corridors, provided you do still let them out within, say, 24 hours of perceived time. I’ll also help you locate one likely victim for each successful rescue, so that you still get a full meal for your trouble.” Jonah leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “And I’d wager that a tense alliance between enemies would be right up your alley anyway. You’d enjoy the chance to feed on me, wouldn’t you?”

The floor shifted and morphed under Elias’s feet. Jonah maintained eye contact with Michael, but he Knew that he was standing on top of faded yellow wood.

_Jonah? Jonah. Jonah. That’s a door. We’re on a door, Jonah._

“And what’s to stop me from devouring you right now?” Michael chuckled. “Why should I help you first?”

_Jonah, move. Just- Just get off the door, Jonah._

“You want to see where I’m going with all this, don’t you? You’re still too curious, even after all your time away from the Eye.”

Another nauseating laugh. “Curious enough to wonder what will happen to you in there, perhaps?”

_Is this really necessary, Jonah? Couldn’t we just, like, not play chicken with the Distortion right now?_

Jonah laughed and raised one of Elias’s eyebrows. “Do it. See what happens.” And he Looked directly into Michael’s mind, as deep as he could see.

_Holy fuck, this is worse than the door would have been._

Before Elias had a chance to shut out Jonah’s Sight completely, his mind was flooded with a dizzying array of branching fractal trains of thought. Everything he thought he was sure of spiraled out into maybes and should-haves and what-ifs. Every path contained a thousand turns not taken; every conversation contained a thousand things left unsaid; every line of inquiry branched and branched again, and he was pursuing every option at once, watching them squirm as the Eye tried to pin down the truth, feeling his mind unravel and drift out of his grasp into a churning sea of every possible thought…

Just when Elias thought he was going to pass out, they broke eye contact. Jonah fell back against the opposite wall of the hallway, nursing a pounding headache. Michael, meanwhile, was leaning heavily against his door frame, trembling as his entire form twisted and stretched and twitched unpredictably. The door in the floor was gone.

“I’d…” Jonah gasped. “I’d advise you not to try a direct confrontation again. Neither of us is really built for it, after all.”

Michael just stared at him warily.

 _I bet it’d be more satisfying to betray him than the Archivist,_ Elias whispered into the threads around Michael. _He doesn’t trust, but he always thinks he’s so in control. He thinks he’ll see it coming. And he deserves it, god, he deserves it so much…_

“Anyway, as I was saying,” Jonah continued, straightening up and trying to put himself back together a bit, “I’m not going to lay out all of my long-term plans for you, but I _do_ think you’ll quite enjoy the results if we succeed. I won’t ask you to go against your nature, of course; you would be free to abandon our little alliance without warning at any time, though if you try to take the Archivist I _will_ come looking for him.”

He allowed a long pause for Michael to consider the terms, then offered a hand for him to shake. “So…do we have a deal?”

After another moment of hesitation, Michael slowly reached out an arm. His hand felt like a bag of gravel in Elias’s. The wicked grin that spread across his face looked _wrong_ , like someone had installed his mouth backwards or something—a lot like how the wicked grin on Elias’s face _felt,_ come to think of it.

“For now, Overseer. _For now_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: I'm going to write a nice concise chapter that advances the plot  
> My sad monkey brain: FOR SALE: WEED SOCKS, NEVER WORN  
> Me: ...  
> Brain: Also I've decided that it is impossible to write dialogue for Michael  
> Me: .........
> 
> Thanks for the comments on the last chapter! I didn't have the spoons to respond to them right away, but I've been opening it up and reading them when I need cheering up : )


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Archives crew try to investigate. Elias tries to get comfortable. Jonah has other plans for all of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific content warnings:  
> -Psychological torture  
> -Past trauma getting brought up (both accidentally and intentionally)  
> -Eye trauma mention

“Okay, okay, let’s just…try to get a timeline going,” Sasha said, absentmindedly chewing the end of the dry-erase marker while she tried to think. The board was getting crowded—it had been easy for the group to find a million possible leads, but now it was proving almost impossibly hard to sort through them.

“Gertrude disappeared on the 15th of March, 2015,” she summarized, circling a few of the scrawled notes peppered throughout the board as she went. “Elias found her desk covered in blood and the Archive floor soaked with petrol. A few days before that, some guy came in claiming to have had a dream that foretold her death, right, Jon?” Jon nodded from his desk behind the chairs Martin and Tim had dragged into his office. “Did he say anything about how it would happen?”

Jon sighed. “Nothing…understandable. It sounded _big,_ though. Supernatural. Like he’d never seen anyone die like that before. Not exactly consistent with gunshot wounds. And of course, he seems to have given a fake name, so it’s not like we can try to follow up with him on it.”

“Elias reported her missing,” Martin said. “Maybe he knows more about the context than he told the police? He could at least point us to what she was working on when it happened.”

“I don’t know if he would,” Jon muttered. “He didn’t have much to say when I asked him about it after Martin found Gertrude’s body. Really kind of rushed through it and shooed me out the door, to be honest.”

Tim sighed. “No offense, Jon, but…were you doing the crazy eyes thing when you asked him?”

“…What ‘crazy eyes thing’?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Tim teased. “Like this.” He schooled his expression into a haunted, desperate look, eyes wide and hungry, and leaned in close to Jon’s face with his hands firmly on the desk. “Like, your ‘I need to know this right now and I’m not gonna eat or sleep or even blink until I do,’ sort of face.”

Jon crossed his arms and slid his chair back from the desk in a huff. “I do _not_ look like that. …Do I?” He turned to Martin, who was studiously avoiding eye contact, and then to Sasha, who shrugged noncommittally, and then glared back at Tim.

“I’m just saying,” Tim continued, holding his hands up placatingly. “We were all a bit of a mess after the worms, and you can get a bit…intense, when you’re stressed out. Maybe he wanted to make it quick and not give you anything else to worry about right then. It’s probably worth asking again now that things have calmed down, you know? Or maybe even sending someone else?”

Jon rolled his eyes. “I’m not some rabid wild animal that needs to be mollified before I can have a human conversation, Tim. If there was anything Elias didn’t tell me, I highly doubt that he’d just turn around and tell someone else-”

“Oh, get _over_ yourself,” Tim muttered.

“Excuse me?” Jon snapped.

Martin and Sasha were moving to mediate a bit when a voice rang out from the door to the Archives.

“Um, should I come back later or-”

“Oh, Basira.” After a moment’s awkward hesitation, Jon stood and walked out to meet her in the hallway.

“Hold on, what was that about?” Tim hissed after the door closed. “Isn’t she the cop who was asking people about Gertrude?”

Sasha shrugged. “I can pester him about it when he gets back in. Why don’t you two go ahead and see what you can get out of Elias?”

* * *

Jonah was sitting comfortably in his office, leaning back in his chair as he went over a purchasing request from Artefact Storage.

Elias, meanwhile, was sitting uncomfortably in his office, silently willing Jonah to _please for God’s sake just turn on the heat already, come on, I know we’re wearing a suit but it’s like almost the end of October now and not all of us grew up before they invented room temperature. Maybe go for a coffee break? Something warm to drink? It’s probably time for a break, right? What time is it? Jonah. Jonah, look at the clock. What time is it? It has to be almost teatime. Look at the goddamn clock, Jonah._

Jonah didn’t look at the clock. He just kept on reading about the new fireproof bookshelf that Artefact Storage needs (turns out the old bookshelf was _decidedly not fireproof_ ), leaving Elias to listen to the clock instead of actually knowing the time.

_Oh come on, why go to all the trouble of buying the world’s loudest clock if you’re not even gonna look at it?_

No luck with the clock, or with the heater for that matter. Before long, Elias was stewing in a sea of minor annoyances—the too-cold temperature, the desire to shift into a different position in the chair, the little itch on the back of his head which Jonah didn’t bother scratching, the incessant ticking of the clock boring into his brain...

The knock on the door was a welcome distraction.

“Ah, Tim. Martin. Come in,” Jonah said without looking up.

“This a good time, boss?” Tim said with a cheerful smile as he opened the door and leaned in. Jonah waved him into the room, with Martin trailing behind him tentatively.

“D-Do you want some tea?” Martin ventured. “I brought an extra cup.”

“Oh, thank you, Martin. Just set it on the desk.”

 _Martin, you are a literal angel sent from heaven and I’ve decided to name you Employee of the Month for October,_ Elias thought as his chilled hands gripped the mug and the warmth from the first sip of tea settled in his chest. The sudden onslaught of comfort was so much that he barely even registered what the Archival assistants were saying for a moment.

“—whether she had any enemies around then, maybe something she was investigating?” Tim was saying when Elias caught up to the conversation.

Jonah paused to consider this for a long, dramatic moment, during which Elias was treated to another generous sip of piping hot tea. _Holy shit. Martin. Thank you. I’m going to create the Elias Bouchard Memorial Award for Excellence in Blatantly Sucking Up to Your Boss Before Asking a Favor, and you’re gonna be the first recipient._

Jonah set down the tea and took a deep breath before responding.

“Are you asking for Jon?”

Tim and Martin shot each other a look before answering “Not really” and “Why do you ask?” respectively. Elias felt his face sink deeper into Jonah’s favorite judgmental-boss expression.

“It’s just that he hasn’t been the most stable lately,” Jonah explained. “He kept exploring the tunnels in secret until I had to take the key from him, for example. Do either of you have any idea how risky it is to wander around one of Smirke’s creations alone?”

Tim did. Elias could see it in the way his smile froze on his face. Jonah seemed to take notice too—his eyes lingered a little on Tim’s expression and Elias felt his head tilt almost imperceptibly to one side. Probably a mental note to Look into Tim’s history in a bit more detail later.

“Look,” Tim finally said. “He’s super stressed out over this whole Gertrude thing, and I think it’d do him some good to have new information to focus on. Might make him more stable in the long run.”

“Isn’t there anything you remember?” Martin asked. “The Archives are such a mess, there’s no way we’ll get anywhere without any leads to go on.”

“Which is precisely why I need all of you to focus on doing your jobs and let the police do theirs,” Jonah said, staring pointedly at Martin for just long enough to make him shrink back before turning his eyes on Tim for good measure. Tim held his gaze with a brave customer-service sort of smile, though Elias could see his eyes starting to water a bit.

“Besides,” Jonah sighed, relenting a little, “Gertrude was a very independent worker, and I honestly haven’t kept track of every one of her research projects. I know that she was following up on some suspicious groups at the time of her death, but I couldn’t tell you details.”

 _Oh, yeah, right,_ Elias thought bitterly, remembering the smell of the petrol and the recoil from the gun. _How are you supposed to know what your employees are up to? What do they think you are, omniscient? Are you your Archivist’s keeper?_

“But what—” Martin began.

“And you know how Jon gets sometimes,” Jonah continued. “He puts on that aloof act, but tell him that Gertrude stopped for coffee the morning she died and he’ll be out interrogating every barista in London within the hour. I’m sure not every dangerous thing Gertrude investigated had a hand in her death, and I don’t want him making himself a target for anyone who _isn’t_ already hunting Archivists.”

They didn’t have a response to that. Jonah let the thought sink in for a bit before he started talking again.

“How about this: I’ll take some time to look over my correspondence with Gertrude leading up to her death, and I’ll consider sharing my findings with Jon _if_ there’s anything of note and _if_ I can see evidence that this little investigation isn’t interfering with the productivity of the Archives.” Jonah glanced quickly to the little page-a-day calendar on his desk. “Halloween is coming up, after all, and I don’t want the backlog to get any worse.”

_Oh. Oh, it’s…it’s the 17 th. _

Tim and Martin were muttering their reluctant agreement and shuffling back out of the office, but Elias found himself focusing more and more on the date.

_It’s, ah shit, and it’s 2016 too, isn’t it?_

With the archival staff gone, all the little discomforts started to press against Elias’s consciousness again, but now there was an undercurrent of crushing despair, an urge to run, and a feeling like the walls of the office were getting closer, boxing him in. He couldn’t move. _He couldn’t move._

Jonah looked up from the desk and frowned with an audible “Hm?”

_I can’t breathe- no, he’s breathing just fine, it’s fine. Oh god I can’t- can’t m- stop, stop, it’s no different from any other day, it’s just a number on a calendar, it’s just- for god’s sake I’ve literally lived this exact same date before, it like…double doesn’t mean anything, it’s not even-_

Elias’s train of thought was interrupted by Jonah lifting his hand to his chin in puzzlement, setting off a flurry of _stop stop stopstopstop get your h- my hands- don’t put your- my- don’t touch my face, stop touching my face…_

“Oh,” Jonah whispered as he glanced at the calendar again. “I _see._ I’d honestly forgotten,” he added with a smirk. “And it’s a big one, isn’t it? Twenty years as Head of the Institute. We’ll have to do something special.”

_Don’t. Stop that. Hey, hey, don’t you dare-_

Jonah dared. The memories came in so fast and sharp and vivid that Elias couldn’t even distinguish them from each other at first. It just felt like a cold knife plunged into the middle of his brain, piercing clean through everything he was trying to think.

_No._

Then the images came flooding in through the wound in his mind.

_Stop it._

His dad glaring at him when he said he didn’t really care what he majored in. “James” shaking his head that time he caught him smoking on his break. Jonah’s eyes in the mirror.

_Stop. It._

Allen’s face, contorted in terror. Allen’s face, eyeless and still. Elias’s own face seen from the outside, fearful and pleading. His own face, eyeless and sobbing and gasping for air…

_Oh god, stop it, just stop…_

Jonah sat back in his chair and finished the tea, letting the warmth from the drink mingle with the warmth from his eyes and settle in his chest. Once the tea was gone and the last images had faded from Elias’s mind, he sighed contentedly and then went right back to signing his approval for a new metal bookshelf.

_Twenty years. Twenty years. Twenty goddamn fucking years of this bullshit. Happy fucking anniversary, you fucking monster._

* * *

When Martin and Tim dejectedly returned to the archives, they found Jon and Sasha leaning over a tape recorder, hanging on every word.

“…whatever creature Mr. Heller encountered down there,” came the voice from the tape. “It was 56 years ago, but if it’s still alive, I should be careful. What was it? A guardian of some sort? Or perhaps… perhaps… it too was once an archivist.”

“Was that…Gertrude?” Martin asked, causing Jon and Sasha to yelp and jump practically a foot off the ground. “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to-”

“I- um,” Jon stammered. “Basira, she’s been, the police officer who was just here, I mean, she’s been sort of…lending me some of- some of Gertrude’s old tapes from evidence, but I…this one was…”

“You have tapes from Gertrude?” Tim asked. “What are they about?”

“ _A_ tape. One. Well, two now. The first wasn’t anything that seemed relevant to her death; just a recording of some old written statement about a creepy Russian circus.”

A sudden hush fell over half of the room. Jon didn’t seem to notice.

“But this second one, I’m-I’m not really sure what to think about-”

“What circus?” Tim said, more forcefully than he meant to.

Jon stopped mid-ramble and looked up at him. “Tim?”

Tim glanced away. “Nothing, sorry. You were saying?”

“Are you…all right?”

“Oh, sorry, yeah, yeah I’m fine,” Tim stammered. “Just was, I was following up on a case a while back that mentioned an evil circus, so I, uh, I was wondering if you still have that tape around for me to borrow. But it can wait,” he added quickly, as Jon started reaching into his desk for the other tape. “What was on this new one?”

Jon and Sasha ended up just playing the tape again.

“An ancient Archive?” Martin asked when it was done. “And- and why would she think the monster inside was…was an Archivist?”

“I- I don’t _know,”_ Jon murmured. “Are we all just…part of a chain? A long line of, of people? Things? Calling themselves Archivist?”

“Sounded like they got attacked, too,” Tim pointed out gravely. “By a mob of Christians, or ‘those who sing the night,’ or whoever it actually was. Which means…”

“Archives of the supernatural aren’t popular?” Sasha ventured. “Whether it’s a mob sacking the Serapeum of Alexandria or some mystery intruder with a can of petrol, there are people who want to destroy them.”

There was a heavy pause before Jon finally spoke again.

“I just wish we knew who, and why.”

* * *

A couple hours later, Jonah and Elias passed near the Archives on the way to Artefact Storage with the completed budget forms and heard quiet sobbing from the men’s room nearby. Jonah dawdled on the return trip, timing it just perfectly to catch Tim in the hallway as he emerged.

“Oh, hello, Tim.” Jonah called out, causing Tim to freeze. “I trust Jon wasn’t too hard on you when you told him my response?”

“Huh? Oh, no, he was…” Tim’s face was flushed, and his eyes still looked red and puffy. He took a steadying breath before finishing, “He took it fine. Said it was fair, and we’ll try to get through the Halloween rush.”

“Well, let me know if he gives you any trouble, and I’ll take it up with him directly.” Jonah was Looking at Tim as he said it; Elias caught glimpses of a stage and clowns and _skin,_ and Tim seemed to squirm a little under the scrutiny _._ Luckily for Tim, though, Jonah was still playing the concerned boss and—maybe more importantly—was already full. He left him with some bland pleasantries and headed back upstairs.

When they passed the door to the Archives, Elias put all his helpless anger from the day into practically dragging Sasha out into the hallway where she could run into Tim. By the time they started talking Elias was already too far away to make out any words, but Sasha’s tone was gentle and concerned and Tim sounded calm and earnest, so he figured it would work out okay. Little victories.

The office was as cold as ever. Jonah didn’t turn on the heat for another two weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOW BOUT THAT EPISODE 193 THOUGH
> 
> Jonny Sims, what did I ever do to earn an episode with an ENTIRE OG!ELIAS STATEMENT that DOESN'T EVEN CONTRADICT ANYTHING IN MY FIC that wasn't already an AU? My crops are watered, my depression is cured, my thesis is writing itself.
> 
> (My thesis is not, in fact, writing itself, hence the slow updates on fun writing, but I'm still going! Thanks for the kudos and comments!)

**Author's Note:**

> I am in grad school and this will update irregularly. But it will update. Probably.


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